Into My Own
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Link attempts to explain the nature of time and the source of his own insanity.


Time isn't linear. That's the first thing I have to explain if you want to understand this; if you want to understand about this place and about me.

Time is very important, more than most people will give it credit for, because people live in the present and even though they say words like past and future it doesn't mean much. After all the past is irrevocable and unchanging, a memory and already half forgotten, and the future is even worse. The future is lost in a haze of uncertainty, it's a shifting thing, depending so much on the present that even the slightest change will cause it to transform completely. People don't like the idea of past or future any more than they like the idea of death; they say the words but in reality they don't mean much.

You think I'm lying? You say that you think about the future all the time, but you don't. You only grasp the idea of it, an abstract view of what is to come a few theories that may or may not be right, you don't actually comprehend the future.

But all that stuff about past and future, it's irrelevant in the end because neither of them are real. Time isn't linear; it doesn't run like a river, winding down from the mountains. Time isn't even circular like some of the Clock Town scholars will tell you. It's funny, I've seen them spend all their time sitting and studying wasting away but they're still wrong.

Time isn't a river, it isn't a circle, and it isn't a line.

The point? I'm getting there. Sorry, but it's been a while since I've tried to explain… In fact I don't think I've tried before, but it's hard to tell, even I get confused sometimes.

Time is everywhere, no that's wrong too, time is more than everywhere. Time extends beyond the borders of this world into the infinite. Time encompasses more dimensions than I myself am aware of.

Let me try to explain, the essence of the universe lies in the choices we make. I choose to talk to you, you choose to listen, and in our choices the universe is maintained but what if I hadn't chosen to talk to you, that would be a branch off of this universe, another world entirely, a world ruled and encompassed by time.

Who knows in some other world maybe you don't exist at all, maybe you're only a shell of a girl whose only purpose is to be burned alive as Termina comes to an end. I'm sorry, I'm upsetting you, but you do see the point don't you? I hope you see it, these words become more tangled with each retelling, and soon I won't be sure if I'm saying anything at all.

Those other worlds are just as tangible as this one is, or at least to me they are, not to you.

Most people only see their own universe, their own view of time from their own fogged windows of reality. They see something that resembles a line and they are content with believing that's all there is to it. A line, maybe a circle.

I see all of it. I see all the worlds and all their branches. I see everything. I see you sitting there in the grass next to Epona, but I also see the stark and bitter mountains, I see the dying Zora, I see the masked demon dancing atop the clock tower, and I see the moon falling time and time again.

I see everything and it's driving me mad.

Yes, I'm mad. I can't help it, not anymore, not after this. Insanity is a chronic illness you see, and I have all the time in the world.

No, I'm not laughing at you. It's just sometimes when you're in a lot of pain, sometimes you find everything funnier. You don't understand. Well you will soon, or rather you already have because I see you in some other world and you can't hear me at all, you're already dead. They took your soul in pieces until there was nothing left to scream. So, when they watched you burn, it was as if you didn't feel any pain.

You asked why I'm so funny, maybe you weren't looking for this detailed of an explanation, but I'll give one anyway. You think that you can tell time by a watch, like the big clock they have in Clock Town.

They can't, that's only a glimpse of time remember. After all people define time as change, specifically change in light, so really you aren't measuring time you're just measuring light. Like the moon, that's not time, it's just the moon coming closer and closer…

Time can't be measured or tracked, can't be predicted, can't be caged, time can only be seen, only glimpsed.

I'll tell you a secret if you promise to keep it.

This isn't the first time I've had this conversation, I just told you it was. In reality you're always changing, sometimes you're the girl on the ranch, sometimes you're the Deku king, sometimes you're the Goron's ghost, and sometimes you're Majora herself. You're always shifting, changing faces, changing positions, you're as fluid as time itself.

I change too though, even I don't have a single face. Sometimes I'm human, like I appear to you right now, but I'm also the Deku Scrub, I'm the Zora, and I'm the Goron. I'm a lot of people, you just see one of them. They're like masks, brightly colored masks. I'm a parade of empty reflections, without past, without soul, without future. Just like you, the difference is I recognize the soullessness in my eyes.

Even the conversation changes, sometimes it occurs, sometimes it doesn't, words are left out, sentences removed. All those different branches, those new and strange worlds, all existing within the paradox that already exists.

In most worlds I avoid this conversation altogether for I find words elude me and that no matter how I chase them I only catch the shadow of their meaning. I find it's kinder to leave you alone, but there are other worlds, like this one where it just doesn't make a difference to me anymore and you're little more than a wind up doll with a brightly painted face.

Only the moon remains the same. In every world I see, it is always falling down, and we always burn together.

I'm only a mask you see, but every once in a while, if you search the branches hard enough you'll find all my secrets.

After all, even in a parallel universe lunatics can be self-indulgent.

**Author's Note: Well, that was depressing. Thanks for reading reviews would be splendid you guys are the best. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Majora's Mask**


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